Angels investment for vanilla company

Tauranga-based investment consortium Enterprise Angels BOP is investing in Heilala Vanilla as it seeks to develop an international brand.

Also investing in the business is the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund (NZVIF).

The constorium involves 12 individual investors including Kapiti Cheeses and Kapiti Ice-Cream founder Ross McCallum and founder of iconic vodka brand 42 Below Geoff Ross.

“Heilala Vanilla is an example of the kind of innovative world-class food company New Zealand can produce and the kind of company we look to invest in,” says chairman of Enterprise Angels Neil Craig.

The deal will provide the capital injection Heilala Vanilla needs to substantially expand its innovative business and ramp up its current exports to Australia, the United States and South East Asia.

New opportunities in the US, UK and Japan will also be explored in 2012.

Heilala Vanilla sales and marketing manager Jennifer Boggiss says the company’s aim is to become a globally-recognised brand which professional chefs, bartenders and food lovers around the world will seek out.

And they have made a great start – snapping up numerous food awards and earning high profile endorsements from the likes of leading UK celebrity chef Peter Gordon.

Their most recent accolades came at the NZ Food Awards 2011 where Heilala Vanilla Syrup won the KPMG Food Export Award and the Food Enterprise Innovation Award.

This syrup encapsulates Heilala Vanilla’s desire to make vanilla an everyday product – not just an ingredient used for baking cakes and biscuits. 

Boggiss says the syrup will be heavily promoted this year for use in coffees, cocktails, smoothies and to pour over fruit, pancakes and ice-cream.

“New Zealand has been a great testing ground for our new products and we are confident we can achieve strong growth in Australia which has a similar foodie market,” she says.

“We’ve been exporting there for two years now and in 2011 we gained listing with Thomas Dux (the Woolworths gourmet food retail chain) ranging the full product range.

“The plan for 2012 is to focus on boosting our sales and marketing resources across the Tasman.”

Americans are also big vanilla consumers and Boggiss says the company will establish warehouse facilities on both the west coast and in New York in the near future.

“Our Heilala Vanilla Beans and Paste are now in a number of high profile New York restaurants and our Heilala Vanilla Syrup is in 200 US stores through prestigious food retail chain Williams-Sonoma.

“Dean and Deluca, another US gourmet food retail chain, is also set to stock Heilala Vanilla Sugar from Easter 2012. We’ve made a good start on the US market, but there’s still a long way to go.”
Heilala Vanilla is the only company worldwide that grows processes and sells its own vanilla products, having total ownership of the supply chain.

The family-owned business is jointly run by Boggiss, her husband, Garth, and her father, John Ross.

The trio has transformed the market for vanilla products and dramatically improved the fortunes of one small Tongan community in the process.

Heilala Vanilla’s crop of vanilla beans are grown on the Vava’u Islands in northern Tonga before being harvested and sent to New Zealand for processing and packaging into premium vanilla beans, extract, paste, syrup, sugar, ice-cream and powder products.
The plantation land in Tonga was gifted to John, a retired dairy farmer, by the Latu family in recognition of his humanitarian efforts to help re-build their local community following a destructive cyclone in 2001.

John had personally sent money to help repair the family’s roof and organized his local Rotary Club in South Auckland to undertake various repair projects in the local villages.
Afterwards, Laulile Latu offered John the lease on his family’s plot of land in return for establishing a business that would provide for the local community.

John spent some time researching the best crop to grow and Heilala Vanilla was launched in late 2002.
The business has since flourished, with John supervising the vanilla crop in Tonga.

Jennifer is an accountant by trade with skills in marketing, oversees business development, while Garth has an IT and horticultural background, so is responsible for Heilala Vanilla’s product knowledge and Research and Development.

Boggiss says vanilla is the most labour-intensive agricultural crop on the planet as flowers have to be hand-pollinated within a six hour window and then the resulting vanilla bean nine months later is then carefully cured and dried over a further six month period.
“Vanilla is an annual harvest, which requires a significant investment each year in raw materials.

“This investment, with NZVIF and Enterprise Angels BOP, will allow us to move forward with confidence to both grow existing markets and develop new markets, while also driving product development and innovation,” Boggiss says.

The company has partnered with Massey University in recent years to develop their innovative creations such as their award-winning vanilla syrup.

Synthetic chemicals rather than real vanilla beans are used in 98 per cent of vanilla products sold worldwide, so Heilala Vanilla’s authentic products taste substantially better than their rivals.

“Our new investment partners have seen the terrific commercial opportunity that lies ahead, and we’re very excited to be moving into the next phase of our company’s development.”

The NZVIF was established by the New Zealand government in 2002, to help build a vibrant venture capital market in New Zealand. Enterprise Angels BOP is the 13th partner in NZVIF’s Seed Co-Investment Fund and the first in the Bay of Plenty.
“Our goal is world vanilla domination,” Boggiss laughs, “but we want to grow our business in a sustainable way”.

“Our Pacific partnership is something rather special to us.

“We are strongly committed to supporting the local Tongan economy as well as generating export dollars for New Zealand.”